Quote of the Day - Second Marriages

A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience – Samuel Johnson

It is true — and not just for those whose first marriage ended in divorce. It is true because almost all marriages end badly. Remarrying having experienced a bad ending to a marriage really is the triumph of hope over experience.

Most people assume this aphorism only applies to bad marriages — those that end in divorce. Divorce is a bad ending to a marriage. It is an act of faith to think remarriage after divorce will turn out better than the first marriage. Sometimes it does, and a long and happy second marriage follows. On many other occasions? Nah.

But good marriages also, which almost always end badly, at least for one partner. Because one of the pair dies first. It does not matter how good the marriage was, to hold the hand of your beloved partner of many years as they slip away into death is a bad ending. To get a phone call or a knock at the door to have someone tell you your spouse is not returning alive may be an even worse ending. To watch a spouse die from violence is just as bad.

That is not to say marriage is bad. My marriage was very good, however badly it ended. Perhaps the pleasure I got from it made the end of it worse, holding my wife's hand for the last time as she slipped away. I will always have a Janet-shaped hole in my heart. Despite that, if knowledge of that day had come to me before I proposed, I would still have married her. The 40+ years that followed more than balanced the pain of our parting.

You enter a first marriage oblivious to its end, especially if you wed in your teens or early twenties. (She was 19; I was 21.) At that age the end of your marriage has no reality. It is not part of the happily ever after that lies ahead at that point. You realize there will be struggles and fights (if there is nothing in your marriage worth fighting over, your marriage is not worth much), but you know you will get through them. The hard times you endure together make the good times sweeter. Even if hard times outnumber the good, knowing you have a faithful partner who has your back make the hard times more endurable. You don't understand how bad the end will be until it comes.

With a second marriage? You have experienced the end of a first marriage, possibly even (or especially even) great marriage. You know it is going to end badly; if not for you, for your new spouse. You know what you will go through if you lose another spouse. If you have an ounce of decency you know what your spouse will go through if you die first. Who could want that? A second marriage is certainly a triumph of hope over experience.

It will be six years next Wednesday since I lost Janet. It still hurts and will always hurt. Despite that, I am willing to let hope triumph over experience. At least for me, being single sucks. It is lonely. It is unfulfilling, especially living alone.

Have I found anyone? No. But I am looking. And realizing the rules have changed since I was last seeking a bride. And that I don't understand them. But in the Pandora's Box opened with my wife's death, with one last thing finally emerging. Hope.